The West and Central Africa Poverty Mapping Initiative

There are often large regional differences in poverty and other social indicators within a country. But geographic poverty profiles based on household surveys tend to be limited to broad areas because survey sample sizes are too small to permit analysts to construct valid estimates of poverty at the local level. This issue of Findings looks at another way to look at information by constructing poverty maps. Using a methodology developed by Elbers, Lanjouw, and Lanjouw (2003), detailed poverty maps can be obtained by combining census and survey data. This issue of Findings looks at how to construct such a map and how to build capacity for the analysis of the census data.